St. Louis police are rolling out a new crime mapping tool

City of St. Louis crime data is again available online in map formats.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department announced Monday that the new tool went live over the weekend. It generates searchable maps that contain information on almost every crime in the city, from misdemeanors to murders. The data is updated approximately every 24 hours and goes back six months.

Chief Robert Tracy said providing the information in an easy-to-read format could help ensure people’s perceptions of crime are consistent with the fact that it is declining in almost all categories.

“Often, [people] Let’s say we can’t make an informed decision because we don’t see everything you see,” he said. “Well, you see it now with some protections for victims and anonymization of some addresses. They bring it down to the block level.”

The data will be particularly helpful for neighborhood violence prevention advocates, said Wil Pinkney, the director of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention.

“It will activate community members and partner organizations by providing data that can help determine where critical violence prevention and intervention resources can be deployed,” he said in a statement.

Sex crimes, domestic violence and incidents where the victim is a juvenile are not taken into account in the maps. They can be accessed at www.slmpd.org/mapping.